Favorite Things
by Stanrick
Summary: When a young green-eyed wizard and a minimally older brown-eyed witch, the best of friends for years, discover their mutual fondness for one particular armchair in front of one particular fireplace, it can inevitably mean one thing and one thing only: War. And then also – eventually, potentially – something else. Maybe. But first it's definitely war.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter is the intellectual property of Not Me. There's a good chance Not Me will sue me if I should ever seriously claim the contrary, and since Not Me has lots of money and I would therefore be blown straight from court into oblivion, I am inclined to refrain from ever doing that. Doing so would also be morally wrong, but that's not really all that important nowadays. It's all about arbitrary laws that are so convoluted that they cannot be fully comprehended by those they are allegedly made for. Fun times.

 **Introduction:** To returning readers – all five of them – I cordially wish to dedicate the following words: Collyflobbles. Widdershins. Flibbertigibbet. Mumpsimus. Thank you.

I published my last Potter story around here back in September 2013, which I shudder to realize was almost two years ago. Ever since then ideas kept forming, words kept flowing and pages kept piling up, and yet none of the multiple plots and stories both short and long(-ish) ever reached their much needed conclusion.

And so I have accumulated quite the mass (and mess) of unfinished, Potter-related material on my hard drive. There's a piece about a single match of Quidditch that I have been meaning to write for quite some time, of which I have about twenty pages of notes and less than 4000 words of actual story – approximately half of which will survive the mandatory revision. There's a story about feet and then this one about an armchair, and concepts and rough ideas for all the magnificent things in between the two. There's also wonderfully depressing stuff, which I'd like to get back to at some point, because there's only so much _Happily Ever After_ you can take. There's really some dark and depressing and brutal stuff there.

So, romantic comedy, then. This one right here I'd personally estimate to consist of just about 95% fluff and 3% plot. Opinions diverge on what the remaining 2% are. Maybe stuffing.

I began writing it when I was basically stuck in everything else, and I was inspired to do so by a fictional armchair that I somehow keep mentioning in those other stories (both finished and unfinished). I thought the simple, straightforward concept would make for a nice 3x3000 words kind of story. It slowly turned into a 4x4000 words kind of thing. So, naturally, it's 20,000 words long now.

Anyway. Hope you enjoy; hope I get to finish some more Potter stuff soon.

If not, expect me in 2017 with a story about a coffee table.

* * *

 **Favorite Things**

 **I**

The ultimate measure of a man, as it was once so eloquently put, is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. And indeed, who would dare deny the irrefutable truth in these wisely spoken words when it is nothing short of a fact universally acknowledged that in moments of comfort and convenience one does not usually stand at all. A somewhat less meaningful, though surely not entirely irrelevant measure of a man may therefore be seen in the exact manner he elects to spend his times of comfort and convenience in, and in what specific location he chooses to do so. While not generally the most profoundly illuminating reflection on a man's true nature, it may nevertheless serve to reveal a thing or two about secrets otherwise unspoken of.

Now, when your school is an ancient castle almost as breathtakingly palatial as it is in other parts endearingly quaint and rustic, picturesquely situated in the remote sprawling Highlands of Northern Scotland, and its principal faculty happens to be the arcane art of actual magic, it may be deemed impossible to find within its spacious confines a resting spot entirely immune against the accusation of possessing at least some degree of a certain extravagance. Relative to the levels of luxury achievable if desired and present on average regardless of one's desires in these most unusual surroundings, however, the personal preference of one particular student could be seen as fairly mundane, if not entirely modest, for all he wished for in his highly cherished times of comfort and convenience was one particular armchair in front of one particular fireplace.

There, in the caressing embrace of the crimson leather upholstery and amidst a fine selection of the softest of feather pillows and fuzziest of wool blankets, life was good. As if by magic, though not actually so, that four-footed refuge would reliably soothe his heart and mellow his mind whenever he needed it the most. And whenever his requirements did not take on quite such dramatic dimensions, it simply offered the best kind of physical comfort that could possibly exist in this world. And the best part about it? It was simple. All you had to do was to let yourself fall right into it, and it would always catch you and never fail to do so. It was there whenever you needed it. It had no demands, no conditions. The armchair was love, the armchair was life.

~•~

 _ **A late September week…**_

With his eyes calmly shut, Harry inhaled as much air as his lungs allowed, filling his inflating chest with the breath of the Earth and letting it flow through his being, imbibing every last one of its precious molecules. And then, when he felt he had truly absorbed its whole invigorating essence, he contentedly breathed it out over his parted lips with a sigh of bliss made audible.

"What is _this?_ " a human voice suddenly cut right into his highly spiritual indulgence, every syllable a sharpened edge. It sounded indignant. Disapproving. Latently accusing.

Harry grudgingly opened one eye – and one eye only – to peek at the source of the unbidden disturbance.

And there she was. The perpetrator. The violator of peace. Sweet Hermione, standing but a few steps away from him. A single one-eyed look at her face was enough to tell him that she was not amused at all for some reason as yet unrevealed to him.

"What is what?" he queried in return, languidly so to some extent but with an undertone of annoyance in his voice.

She gruffly motioned in his general direction with her hands. " _This,_ " she said almost snootily, and for what surely had to be the first time ever in known history she disturbingly enough reminded him vaguely of his aunt Petunia, which was in itself enough to lessen his levels of comfort and convenience immensely and conversely increase his discontent in like amount and manner.

"This is me," he replied with a shrug that mostly made his arms twitch and barely reached his shoulders, "trying to enjoy my well-deserved time in this marvelous armchair right here."

" _Well-deserved_ , he says." She scoffed dismissively. " _This armchair right here._ Unbelievable."

Watching her shake her head he in turn creased his face in confusion, his eyebrows almost shaking hands. "Would you care to elaborate at all on that, or can I go back to being at peace? I'm fine with either option, frankly."

She glowered at him with squinted eyes. "Well," she pointedly said, "since your ignorance appears to be genuine, I'm willing to exercise leniency and inform you soberly of the following fact: you are currently occupying not just any armchair, but most flagrantly so _my_ armchair."

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline at that, their imminent convergence disrupted. "Oh, am I now? _Your_ armchair, you say?" He glanced from side to side as if in honest search for something, then looked at her with his head cocked to the side. "I'm sorry, I must have missed the sign where it says ' _Property of Hermione J. Granger'_."

Hermione had drawn her wand so quickly that Harry hardly had time enough to be properly surprised, and already she flicked and swept it through the air with a few deft twists and turns of her wrist. He recoiled ever so slightly when a couple of thin luminescent tendrils of white sizzling energy shot past his ear, hit the right side of the backrest and shortly after manifested into what appeared to be a solid wooden sign, hanging from the chair on a braided cord.

Harry blinked once or twice, then twisted in his seat to see what it said, finding his expectation fully met – and in very neatly written letters, too:

 _Property of Hermione J. Granger_

Brushing an imaginary speck of dust off his shoulder, he turned to look up at her once more. He heaved a burdened sigh, then made an important kind of pause. "Doesn't count."

She snorted as she crossed her arms, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. "And who gave _you_ the authority on that, huh?"

"It's called common room for a reason, you know?" he retorted composedly. "You can't just go around and start claiming stuff. It's all common property. It's—it's communism in here, really. Ever noticed how red is the dominant color 'round here? It's legit."

Hermione tapped her foot on the rug as she listened to him, a frown burgeoning on her features.

"My claim is what's legit here," she all but snapped at him. "I'll have you know that I happen to come here every Tuesday first thing after my last class of the day to sit down and relax for ten minutes in that very chair before getting on with my day, and that I—I need these ten minutes for my day to be complete. The chair has always been empty when I arrived here, almost as if everyone but you somehow understood and respected that these are _my_ ten minutes. You are disrupting my routine."

"Routine?" he asked with more than a pinch of disbelief. "We are not even in the second month of the term! How many Tuesdays can there have been? Like four? Including today?"

"So?" she gave right back. "I've been sitting in that chair on every single one of those Tuesdays at exactly this time. _Ex_ cluding today."

"For ten minutes."

"Precisely."

"You time your relaxation?"

"I just need a quick breather after a day's schoolwork," she said with a proudly lifted chin. "Ten minutes are perfectly sufficient for that."

"You time your relaxation."

"Honestly, that's hardly the point here…"

"Oh, but it is," Harry insisted. "You see, you don't even truly appreciate how special this armchair is. You're completely casual about it. Your feelings about this armchair are transparently superficial."

"While yours are—"

"Profound."

"Right."

"I'm passionate about this armchair, okay?" He gave the armrest an affectionate caress as if to thereby prove his point. "This right here," and he motioned back and forth between himself and the chair with his forefinger, "this is real."

"Oh, please," she waved him off, unimpressed. "You don't even know what you're talking about. That heavenly manifestation right there, which you keep referring to as an _armchair_ with such _profound_ affection, that's nothing short of Elysium made palpable, okay? It's a slice of paradise. A corporeal semblance of perfection. A three-dimensional ode to joy." She paused. Most likely for dramatic effect alone. "And unlike you, I truly cherish it. It's an object of veneration to me. Because unlike you, I'm an armchair aficionado. I'm a connoisseur of the sedentary way of life. You, on the other hand, are an amateur. An imposter. Your philistine butt cheeks are unworthy of this empyrean tangency."

A significant silence followed in the wake of her words that was hardly broken even when a chatty group of other students of House Gryffindor passed them by without taking too much note of their exchange – peculiarity notwithstanding. Harry, meanwhile, tried very hard to remember what exactly he had felt so clever for just a few seconds before. Success proved elusive.

"Yeah, well," he aptly demonstrated his state of mind in consequence, though he would later insist that he had merely been addled by the unforeseeable thematization of his butt cheeks. Philistine, no less.

"Well?" Hermione most obligingly urged him on.

He shook off his mental entanglement as best he could. " _Well_ … if it means as much to you as your lyrical effusion there would have me believe, then maybe you should make more of an effort to actually _be_ _here_ in time, no? First come, first served, eh? Strikes me as a reasonable rule here. Wouldn't you agree?"

There was a dangerous twinkle in her eyes as she glared at him, yet Harry met her gaze unwaveringly.

"Fine," she finally hissed, the word so sharp on her teeth it could very well have left a gash on her lower lip. "Have it your way. You'll live to regret this, Mr. Potter."

Already she made as if to leave, but Harry hastily asked her to wait before she had even accomplished a single step. "Uh, Miss Granger," he hesitantly began when she had turned to face him again. "Uh, despite our little row earlier today – which I am very sorry about, by the way – and despite, well, whatever exactly this right here was, you'll still help me study later, right? I'll be doomed in Snape's test tomorrow without you."

For a couple of tense seconds her face remained perfectly impassive, her features taut and her eyes directed elsewhere. Then her expression softened – minimally, but perceivably.

"Four o'clock in the library," she then tersely said. "The usual spot."

"Thanks," Harry replied with visible relief. "I'll even let you sit in the chair right now—"

"Don't bother," she stopped him short. "My ten minutes are almost up, anyway. But be advised to not delude yourself into believing that this issue is in any way resolved."

And before a smile could threaten to compromise her stern demeanor, Hermione turned on her heels with a rather dramatic swirl of wavy hair and billowy skirt alike and waltzed off with a lofty stride, determined to remain appropriately miffed for the time being.

Then again, she was not the one currently busy leaning back into the empyrean tangency.

~•~

 _ **One week later…**_

Oh, sweet taste of victory. Usually the comfort alone had been reward enough, but today the satisfaction of triumph was the perfect garnish and the divine cushions her rightful spoils of war. With relish and delight she stretched her arms and legs on her soft and splendid leather throne. Hugging a richly embroidered pillow to her chest, she propped up her legs on the appurtenant footstool and made herself as big as possible, which – frankly – was not very big at all. But the fact that just about three Hermiones abreast could have easily found a place on this magnificent armchair was no small part of its considerable appeal. It was a kingdom amongst seating accommodations. And, better yet, _her_ kingdom.

After enjoying her throne regained for a while, she opened her eyes and watched the entrance attentively from her royal vantage point. The rapture of victory could, after all, not very well be considered fulfilled without the losing party's submissive acknowledgment of defeat. An awful lot of uninteresting subjects walked by before eventually, finally, the one she had been waiting for emerged from the portrait hole, and in perfect accordance with her insidious plan walked straight… past her?

"Excuse me," she spoke up loud enough to get his attention, fighting her way back out of the pile of pillows she had let herself be swallowed by so gladly just minutes earlier, "where do you think you're going?"

"Huh?" He slowed to a halt behind the large sofa that stood directly opposite of the hearth, and – once his eyes found her half-lost amidst her many pillows – looked at her in puzzlement. "I, uh, thought I was going straight to my dorm room to get changed."

"Just like that?"

He furrowed his brow, thereby further emphasizing his already apparent confusion. "Well, I usually don't tend to make much of a fuss about it, but if you wish to join me, perhaps, that should serve to mix things up a little."

She blinked a couple of times while her cheeks slowly but surely began to feel as if they were turning a slightly more vibrant shade of pink, which she resolutely chose to ignore. "Could you, at the very least, take cognizance of my unparalleled triumph here first?"

He stared at her without the faintest hint of cognizance of any sort in his green eyes.

"It's Tuesday afternoon," she impatiently tried to help him catch up to the obvious, "and I'm sitting in my armchair. _My_ armchair." She pointedly tapped the wooden sign that still hung right where she had conjured it exactly a week ago, which was kind of noteworthy in and of itself since magically conjured objects were bound to dissipate eventually and not many a witch her age would be able to rival this feat.

His eyes followed the motion of her hand, then wandered back to meet hers.

"Oh," he then exhaled in long-awaited recognition. "That." He chuckled, and she didn't know what to think of that. Hardly an appropriate reaction for the defeated. "I completely forgot about that. I thought we had resolved our stupid row from that unfortunate morning."

"Well, yes," she concurred, albeit perplexedly. "But I didn't take that to mean that our battle for armchair dominance was over. What has the one thing to do with the other? Our row was childish und unnecessary. This here, on the other hand, is serious business. But if you're surrendering already…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Harry was quick to forestall any unwarranted conclusion. "Now wait a minute. I said no such thing. I merely wasn't aware that we were still doing this, okay? But if war is what you want… lady, you'll have it."

"Oh, bring it on, mister."

"Oh, it's on." He pointed a warning finger at her, at which she rolled her eyes.

"I'm trembling with fear."

"Yeah, you better."

Already he had made a couple of decisive steps toward the winding staircase that led up to his original destination, but then he turned on the spot and backtracked.

"You'll still come to our Quidditch match on Saturday though, right?"

"Of course," she replied without hesitation. She had yet to miss a single one of his games.

"Good," said he, grinning. "I'll be seeing you then."

"You'll probably see me again in about twenty minutes, too."

"And most likely multiple times a day before next Tuesday."

"But especially next Tuesday."

"Especially then."

"Uh-huh."

"Count on it, missy."

"Get changed, ye lousy muppet."

As Harry went his way with another chuckle, Hermione sunk back into her little Elysium with a contented smile stretched across her carefree features, and whether her armchair sovereignty was its sole cause or if maybe something far less obvious played into it as well – who could tell?

~•~

 _ **Next Tuesday…**_

Being an exemplary student certainly has its advantages, not the least of which is of course the ability to get away with behaving in direct contradiction to it. On her way back to Gryffindor Tower, Hermione was feeling mightily spunky for having asked Professor Burbage to be excused from class a whole two minutes early. That she had also been fully prepared to deliver a false pretense if so required made her feel downright shady, and the fact that she had felt nothing but immense relief when the Professor had simply let her go without asking to hear a reason for her request – if only because the woman had been perfectly flabbergasted by this unprecedented event – did nothing to lessen Hermione's newfound daredevil self-conception. If Mario Puzo should ever get around to writing _The Godmother_ , Hermione thought it might as well be about her. She was already considering moving to Sicily.

Walking with an adequate sense of urgency – yet refraining from running, for that would obviously have been silly – she arrived at the portrait of the Fat Lady in due form and time. Classes had officially been dismissed barely a minute ago and she was well ahead of most of the other returnees. Some of the younger ones were frolicking about, but Hermione saw no one from her own year. Entering the common room with a healthy portion of satisfaction adding a certain bounce to her step, said satisfaction was instantly and most thoroughly wiped off her metaphorical plate when she raised her head halfway to her final destination.

"Bloody hell!" she exclaimed, standing aghast.

And there he was, sitting there like the king of the world with his hands entwined behind his head, the most complacent lopsided smile on his lips and a jolly twinkle in his vivid eyes. That smug bastard.

"And hello to you too, poppet," he was audacious enough to greet her with a playful wiggle of his eyebrows; then suddenly he turned serious and leaned forward with a concerned expression. "Hey, is something wrong with your lower jaw? Because it's just hanging there."

She closed her mouth, forcefully. "This is impossible!"

Harry casually leaned back in his chair. _Her_ chair! "Denying the evidence because it doesn't suit your personal preference? Who are you and what have you done to Hermione Granger?"

Her cold gaze had become more of a vacant one, her eyes unfocused. "I left class two minutes early! I willingly missed out on _two_ minutes of education! And it should've been enough!" She fixated him again, suspicion and accusation commingling in the withering look she gave him. "How did you do this?"

He gave a shrug. "Magic?"

"Seriously," she said with insistence in her voice. "How did you do it? Was Divination cancelled? Did that ruddy charlatan have one of her episodes again? Tell me!"

Harry took his time, savoring the moment while being just decent enough to try not to be too brazen about it. Nonchalantly looking at his fingernails and deciding that he would later cut them, he finally revealed with another shrug of his shoulder, "I ran."

Her lower jaw did that thing again where it just hung a little. "You… you _ran?"_

"Yeah," he confirmed with a nod. "It's like walking, but faster. You should give it a try sometime."

Now she clenched her teeth quite fiercely. It was all rather fascinating, even though Harry was beginning to wonder whether his wellbeing was at risk by now, and – more importantly – whether he cared enough to stop the teasing and the gloating. It _was_ awfully enjoyable.

"You— _you_ …" Hermione stammered, which was markedly uncharacteristic for her. She gave up whatever she had been searching for with an exasperated sigh. "Urghs, I should've run!"

"Yes," he said. "You should have. Then again, I'm still the faster runner between the two of us, so unless you can get maybe five minutes or more from Burbage, it would still be all for naught."

"Five minutes or more?" she asked with no small degree of indignation. "I'm not a flipping sloth, okay?" Suddenly her face changed as waves of contemplation washed over them, taking all the tautness of anger and frustration with them. "Wait a minute," she whispered pensively, scrutinizing him intently and therewith making Harry feel like a prisoner on the run who's caught in the searchlight. Her eyes widened with realization on an intake of breath. He gulped. "You have the shorter way back!"

"I—"

"You do!" She stared at him with her arms akimbo and both triumph and disbelief accentuating her features. "This is outrageous!"

"It is?"

"You're cheating!"

"I am?"

"With that shorter way of yours!"

" _I_ didn't make it shorter," he defended himself not unreasonably, as even Hermione had to grudgingly concede. "Besides, last time I checked the act of cheating required the existence of rules that can be broken, and I don't recall establishing any of those."

"First come, first served," she proudly recited his own words, if only because she couldn't help herself.

He perked an eyebrow. "And how's that working in your favor right now?"

"Well," she retorted, a bit flustered, "how am I supposed to ever come first when my way to the finishing line is longer?"

There was a pause of some vague significance between them.

"Anyway," she decided to treat the moment with sensible disregard, "this is clearly unfair. It's not a competition when it's practically impossible for one of the participants to win."

"Exactly," Harry readily agreed. "No competition at all. I'm glad we finally settled that."

Hermione pinched her lips so much they almost disappeared from sight completely, which Harry deemed generally regrettable. Eventually they returned, if only by necessity. "We have to agree on a set of rules that establish a symmetrical degree of difficulty for all competitors."

He gave her a dubious look. "Like what?"

"You're not allowed to run," came her answer with barely a second's delay.

Harry ejected a short burst of laughter at that. "Oh, but you are?"

"It compensates for the difference in distance."

"It's not that much longer!"

"But you're also faster."

"That's hardly my fault!"

"Then you are not allowed to take the shortest route possible."

"You want me to take a deliberate detour?"

"Why not?"

He snorted. "I might as well come to your Muggle Studies class room after Divination and we'll start our race from there. Maybe Ron will volunteer to fire the starting pistol. Sure sounds like adequate behavior for prefects."

She tapped her foot on the rug in the unmistakable rhythm of disapproval. "So you are not at all willing to come to an accommodation?"

He gave an important kind of sigh as he meticulously flattened one leg of his pants with his hand. "Maybe we'll simply have to agree that the game is over."

"You're only saying that because you're currently enjoying the spoils," she accused him rather bluntly, then raised her chin a little. "Because you cheated."

"Listen," he said, and to Hermione's bafflement he rose from the armchair to stand right in front of her. She stiffened at the sudden closeness, but didn't flinch. "Since it's so important to you, I'll let you have it. Tuesday afternoon, after the last class of the day, your ten minutes of timed relaxation. Yours. And if I'm here first, I'll even hold it for you."

For a moment she was genuinely speechless, her tongue seemingly stuck to the roof of her mouth. Then, for an additional moment that coincidentally also prolonged her speechlessness, she was lost in myriad shades of green, and from the sincerity in his eyes she could tell that he was not teasing her at all. Obviously, there was only one thing to do here.

"Thank you," she therefore began, "for demonstrating so unequivocally how little this singular armchair actually means to you—" He tried to protest, but wasn't allowed to. "—and for your charming offer. Possibly patronizing, but charming nonetheless."

"I didn't mean it like that," he was able to interpose.

"Charming or patronizing?"

He made a face at her.

"Be that as it may," she continued, "at this point in time I have to politely refuse, because first there is a score to settle. For the love of the game, if you will. And so…" She put a hand against his chest, at which he looked puzzled – first at her hand, then back at her face where the presence of a faint, well-nigh mischievous little smirk bemused him even more. And just when he did the latter, she gave him a push, and offering no resistance he fell back into the cushions. "You just enjoy your transient sense of victory, as did I," she told him. "It's only fair. Even though you cheated. But next week we'll meet again, right here, and we'll be looking at each other with our perspectives once more reversed. And then we'll see how charming a mood you'll be in, Mr. Potter."

Harry looked up at her in disbelief joined by just a little bit of awe. "Wow," he exhaled quite accordingly. "This was like a scene from a movie or something."

She looked rather pleased with herself. "The godmother of all movies, to be sure."

He nodded slowly in absentminded and at best half-comprehending acknowledgement.

"By the way," said Hermione, "would you like to go for a cup of tea at Hagrid's later? He's returned from his trip to Iceland just this morning and I'm sure he's got a tale or two to tell."

"Sure," Harry answered, swiftly recovering from his slight daze. "Like, say, five-ish?"

And just like that it was settled, while other things, of course, still remained to be settled one way or the other. All in due time, however. All in due time.

~Ω~

* * *

 **Footstool note**

 _Controversial convenience:_ The quotation referred to at the very beginning of the story stems from Martin Luther King, Jr.


	2. Chapter 2

**II**

 _ **Between two Tuesdays…**_

With a deep breath she gathered the substantial willpower necessary for overcoming her reluctance to enter the one room in all of Hogwarts that she had the least desire to be in – ignoring the existence of anything even remotely related to Slytherin, or Mr. Filch. Then she knocked, three times in quick succession. With a delay Hermione could not help but deem deliberate and artificial, the only voice that by its oscillating sound alone could make her roll her eyes eventually bade her enter, even from behind a solid door exuding an air of grave importance. And with her mind fully focused on her set objective, she did.

"Miss Granger," the haggard woman greeted her from behind her desk, the apparent surprise in her eyes magnified tenfold by her comically large, horn-rimmed spectacles. "If I had not been aware of the omens of your forthcoming arrival, I might have said that you are just about the last person I would have expected to ever see again in these halls of providence so woefully alien to you."

Hermione swallowed back the bile, hoping she would not suffocate on it. The stagnant air in the cramped room and the heavy, pungent odor of a dozen ill-mixing aromas didn't exactly help, either. "Yes, indeed," she replied forcedly, her eyes briefly lingering on a selection of tattered dreamcatchers dangling from the ceiling. "And I guarantee you I would not be here if it were not an imperative necessity. I… I know we've had our differences in the past, but I implore you to indulge me." She paused and dropped her head, diffidently fiddled around with her fingers and then looked back up at the ever-flustered woman. "Help me Professor Trelawney, you are my only hope."

The Professor was visibly flummoxed to see young Miss Granger so distressed and nervously readjusted her glasses a little, her fingers shaking so much the result ended up less orderly than the outset had been. "My dear child," she thinly exhaled. "Of course, of course. Please, have a seat."

Hermione sat down on the single, flamboyantly cushioned chair in front of Professor Trelawney's cluttered desk. Apart from its unconventional color scheme it was just an ordinary chair. Nothing Hermione would ever consider scheduling her timed relaxation on.

"Now, my dear," Professor Trelawney caringly spoke as her restless fingers flittered across the numerous utensils on the tabletop, "let us pretend that I know nothing of your reasons for seeking me out, so that you may speak your mind freely and naturally."

Once again it took Hermione some considerable effort to refrain from challenging the woman to reveal to her those very reasons she was claiming to be so aware of, but she withstood the temptation. This was not the time to pick a fight with the perpetually unarmed. And so instead Hermione exhaled an unsteady sigh through trembling nostrils, her eyelids nervously aflutter.

"It's… it's about Harry, Professor," she finally cast the fishing rod. As per Hermione's expectation, the name alone was irresistible bait to the alleged seer of Hogwarts. So far, so easy.

"Harry Potter, yes?" Professor Trelawney eagerly inquired, leaning forward in her creaking chair. Hermione confirmed with a weak nod, her eyes averted. "Oh, that poor boy. The Fates must be capricious indeed to burden such an innocent little soul so heavily. Alas, the black shadow of doom is his constant companion, trailing him voraciously on every step, looming over him like a shapeless harbinger of—"

"Yes, yes," Hermione impatiently cut in, "looming all over the place." The Professor was flustered – more than she generally was, that is – at the interruption, and Hermione quickly realized her misstep, put her demeanor back into place and demurely continued with regained gravitas, "Forgive me, Professor, but even to speak of it saddens my heart to the point of being unbearable."

It took the older woman a second to collect herself and contain her irritation. "Why, of course it does. The mistake is fully mine, my dear. Those few of us blessed with the gift of clairvoyance at times forget ourselves amongst the more mundanely-minded, speaking all too freely of things that may be too much to take for the uninitiated."

"Understandably so," Hermione soberly – if somewhat ambiguously – replied despite that unpleasant feeling seething somewhere in the pit of her stomach. "Now, as for Harry… oh, I couldn't speak of this to anyone but you, Professor."

"Go on, go on."

Hermione took a deep breath, building up some suspense. "It's just that… I cannot shake off this feeling that I have, you see? Like a great disturbance in the Force—the qi, the chakra, the feng shui! Uh… the fabric of magic, I mean. It's well-nigh impossible to describe for a hopeless layman such as myself. It's a sense of disquiet and of dread… vague and nebulous, yet so intense at the same time."

The woman behind the desk eagerly nodded her onward. "I don't know what it is, but I have a bad feeling about this, Professor Trelawney. It's like I can feel that Harry is about to lose something that is very dear to him, and that no matter how fast he runs he'll never get there in time. Now, we both know that the gift of the Sight has so regrettably eluded me, and maybe that's why I can't make sense of these strange and unfamiliar but indubitably real sensations. But I'm scared, and I need your help."

"Clearly, my dear," the Professor agreed, her forehead wrinkled with concern. "Most clearly."

"Will you take a look at—or rather, into him, then?" Hermione asked her pleadingly, her eyes beseeching. There were almost tears. "Will you look where no one else can look and see what forever remains shrouded in darkness to the ordinary rest of us?"

Professor Trelawney seemed to be at a loss for words, though the reasons for that may have been manifold. Her twitchy eyes portended impending vocal activity. "This is not a matter of choice, Miss Granger, but one of obligation," she told her solemnly, her right hand hovering shakily in the air for some obscure reason. "Those few of us endowed with the Third Eye should never forget that for all our spiritual preeminence, we are but servants to the common people whenever they call upon us in their times of need."

Nodding slowly Hermione once more swallowed hard, forcing a potential fit of rage back into internal suppression. Professor Trelawney naturally misread her body language completely. "Now, now, my dear," she offered encouragement. "Rest assured, we will shed light into the darkness. You may send Mr. Potter to me at any time."

Hermione shook her head. "I fear that would be a rather futile undertaking. You know how he gets whenever someone shows concern for his wellbeing. It's hard enough to get him to the hospital wing when he's in some sort of actua-uh-physical pain, and if I were to approach him about this particular matter he would probably not even believe me, if you can believe that."

"Ah, yes," Professor Trelawney answered. "Frankly, though, your vague insights into the multifarious world of premonition certainly come as a surprise at this point in your life. To the uninitiated, I mean. Personally, I had my suspicions, of course. Perhaps not all hope is yet lost in your case after all."

"Mh," Hermione equivocated with almost painfully pinched lips. "Well, I was thinking more of an old-fashioned opportunistic kind of approach, if you will. Instead of calling him here out of the blue, I think it would be more advisable to take him for a personal and very thorough session of palmistry or whatever you may deem purposive when he's already with you as per curriculum. You could, say, respectfully ask him to stay with you after class at the next given opportunity."

"Indeed, indeed," the professor agreed. "That is a very considerate plan, my dear. I would never deliberately expose him in front of his class mates, of course."

"Naturally," the student soberly uttered in affirmation. "You know better than anyone that Divination is not a matter of showmanship."

"Well, yes. Yes, I do," Professor Trelawney proudly concurred. "I believe I'll have Mr. Potter again… on Tuesday, if I'm not mistaken."

Hermione smiled the sweetest of smiles. "Oh, I believe you are not."

~•~

 _ **Tuesday, consequentially…**_

Harry was almost livid enough to punch his way through the portrait of the Fat Lady, or just as well the wall next to it. What made him seriously consider that potentially ill-advised course of action, however, was the part of his anger that was directed at no one but himself, which may just have been most of it. How could he have been so clueless? How could it have taken him so long to even suspect what was going on? A spontaneous session of palm reading for the sake of his protection? In private? Yeah, right!

He was already trying his hardest to forget that he had been stupid enough to approach that uninviting chair at her round table, semi-consciously intending to actually sit down and deliver himself to Professor Trelawney's face to face codswallop. And only then, when the woman had told him how _terribly concerned_ his _poor girlfriend_ – _girlfriend!_ – was for his wellbeing, had it finally clicked, and he had legged it straight out of there without so much as another word.

Far too late, of course. At least of that much he had immediately been aware enough, and so instead of rushing the whole way back like a bat out of hell and therewith making an even bigger fool of himself, he had instead stomped through the corridors with steps so heavy they would have suited Hagrid a lot better than his scrawny physique. Incessantly shaking his head throughout his angry march, he had almost suffered a minor case of whiplash by the time he arrived back in Gryffindor Tower.

He stepped inside with furious purpose, acquired his target and marched onward. Stopping right in front of the expectedly occupied armchair, he stemmed his hands into his hips and glowered at the oh so innocently grinning occupant, her immaculate innocence further underlined by the purring ball of cat in her lap.

"Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?" she rhetorically asked, unabashedly gleeful.

Harry deadpanned the response. "Just precious."

She tapped a fingertip against her chin. "Granted, it's probably not quite as glorious when it's not your own plan—"

"Do you have any idea what you've put me through, lady?"

"The fact that you're here already indicates that it can't have been enough to warrant much complaint," she retorted blithely.

"Do you have any idea what you _could've_ put me through?" Harry rephrased right away. "She was ready to do the full palm reading routine, for crying out loud!"

"Aw, she even went with my random suggestion? How adorable. She truly has no idea what she's doing, does she? If that woman had worked for NASA in the sixties, the moon would've landed on us."

Harry inhaled as if to reply, yet nothing came of it at first. Instead, he simply gaped at her for a moment of speechless consternation. "I had no idea you could be so devilishly devious."

"Underestimating your opponent is a short route to defeat."

"I wasn't underestimating your abilities," Harry gave back. "I'm questioning your methods."

A snort was all the answer she deemed pertinent, which prompted him to exhale an elongated sigh.

"Don't you think we've taken this a little too far?"

"Sure," she said in monosyllabic sarcasm. "The moment I'm back on top after completely outmaneuvering you and your unfair advantages we claim some arbitrary moral high ground and play the victim card."

"I—I'm not playing any cards," was his first line of defense. "It's just… that _poor_ woman…"

"Oh, please!" Hermione exclaimed. "I'm all too aware of the things that barmy old hag keeps saying about me behind my back, and how I've basically become her all-purpose scapegoat for every calamity in the world ever since I left that absurd class of hers. I have a very reliable source too, you know? Namely, you."

"Great," said Harry, rather deflated. "So now it's my fault?"

"I didn't mean to insinuate anything of the sort," she calmly stated. "I'll willingly and gladly take all the blame for pulling some strings above the dear Professor's clueless little head and for making her feel like the super special snowflake she yearns so much to be. For the execution of poetic justice, I stand guilty as charged and thus justly convicted. I'd like a cell with a view for my life at Azkaban, please."

Even as he shook his head he could not at all avoid the smile that simultaneously insisted on curling up his mouth. Where had all that anger gone so quickly – and what had it wanted, anyway?

"At any rate," he said, "maybe this is nevertheless a good time to end this little game of armchairs. Not that I haven't enjoyed it, but at this rate you'll have taken over the school by the end of the year."

Hermione lowered her gaze at that, quietly following the motion of her hand through Crookshank's thick orange fur. "If that's what you want, sure," she eventually spoke. "Ending the game, I mean. Not my quest for world domination. It's only understandable that you'd wish to forfeit in the face of this crushing defeat. For your sake, although with a heavy heart, I will accept being declared the winner."

"Wait, what?"

She looked back up at him. "I'm two to one in the lead."

Harry's most prominently scarred forehead showed crinkles of puzzlement at that. "No, you're not," he objected after a moment of inner recapitulation, years of studying the deepest intricacies of mathematics finally coming to fruition. He used his fingers, too. "We're tied at two."

Hermione's brow at once mimicked his. "Then you aren't counting right."

"How much room for miscounting can there possibly be between one and two?"

"There's an infinite amount of numbers between one and two," answered Hermione. "I'd call that room enough."

"But," said Harry, and for an idle moment that seemed to be all. Meanwhile, his cerebrum wondered what his larynx was doing – or maybe it was the other way around. He shook himself. "We're still tied."

Hermione seemed unfazed. "Beginning from what point in time are you counting?"

"Three weeks ago, of course," he expounded. "The first time I disrupted your _routine relaxation_ by being here before you."

"But the game only started officially after that."

"Officially?"

"Well," she mumbled, her voice growing a bit meek all of a sudden as she returned her attention back to the languorous cat sprawled across her lap. "When I said so."

"Oh, come on!" Harry protested energetically. "That's like saying a game of Quidditch only _officially_ starts after one of the teams has scored the first goal and the other one is like, 'Hey, whoa, what's that all about, fellas? You wanna play, or what? Oh, we're gonna play!'"

Hermione considered that for a moment, and Harry fully expected her to continue picking his argument apart, since – as even he was aware – the analogy didn't fully hold up to scrutiny.

"Fine," she said instead, much to his subsequent surprise. "But I won't agree to leave it at this. A tie is completely unsatisfactory."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning that we need some sort of a tiebreaker."

Harry pondered that for a couple of seconds. "You mean… like an epic pillow fight?"

Hermione grimaced at the silliness of the idea, though the conspicuously hopeful tone in his voice didn't fail to intrigue her as much as it amused her.

"Not quite," she was sorry to disappoint him. "I was thinking more along the lines of that thing they had during that big football kerfuffle back in June."

"What thing?"

"That thing they did to make sure there's always a winner."

"A Golden Goal?"

"Exactly," she replied, pleased. "It happened in the final too, didn't it? I'm sure I read it in a paper once, at a cursory glance."

Harry's eyes darkened. "Yes," he grimly muttered. "Bloody Germans scored it…"

"Ah, yes," an uncommonly oblivious Hermione replied. "Wonderful!"

He pursed his lips, not quite partaking of her enthusiasm. "After kicking out England, Hermione…"

"Oh," she said in the manner of someone who almost forgot their keys before leaving the house on an altogether pleasant day. "Well, I suppose it's all relative. Anyway, that's what we'll do. One last round, basically. The winner of which will be crowned winner of the game itself."

"And thereby earning—"

"The irrefutable armchair prerogative, of course."

"Very well," Harry gave his consent. "Next week, then. Same place, same time. Winner takes it all."

"Loser's standing small," added Hermione, which was the closest thing to a Swedish proverb she knew.

"They won't be sitting down, that's for sure."

"Indeed, _he_ won't."

Harry narrowed his eyes at her, but already she giggled into a cupped hand in so endearingly a fashion that the daggers he had intended to look at her turned into chocolate frogs instead as his scowl vanished in favor of a brightening smile.

"It won't count if you just keep your delectable butt cheeks planted there for the whole week, though," he then impressed on her, raising an admonitory finger.

"Well, where would you prefer for my butt cheeks to be, then?" Also, what had he just called them?

"Uuuuh," it came from Harry's throat quite stupidly, his eyes momentarily glazed over.

A stroke of crimson spread rapidly on Hermione's cheeks. The ones that were part of her face, that is. Abruptly she stood erect in unconscious disregard for the unsuspecting cat that was all but catapulted straight from her lap and that in consequence complained most stridently. By the looks of it Hermione was as flummoxed to suddenly be standing there as Crookshanks had been at being hurled through the air without any sort of forewarning, which would at the very least have been the polite thing to do.

"My ten minutes are up," she blurted out.

"Right," said Harry, having some presence of mind to regain. "So now would be the time for…"

"Stuff," she said. "And things."

"Right."

And so it was that stuff and things were indeed done that Tuesday afternoon, none of which directly involved cheeks of any kind or quality.

Seriously, though. What had he called them?

~•~

 _ **The Tuesday to define all Tuesdays, maybe…**_

One day Hermione surely would in hindsight wonder whether her Muggle Studies class of that particular day had been the one hour of her academic life of which she had the least bit of recollection, provided that she would even remember enough of it to have something to wonder about in the first place. Her notes were as sparse as her nervous glances at her watch were frequent. Already she had discussed with the once more slightly befuddled Professor Burbage her intention – her unquestionable need, that is – to leave class early. Again. Just this one last time and then nevermore. It was, after all, of paramount importance.

For Harry, Divination was business as usual: an exercise in endurance and a test of fortitude against an unremitting assault of nonsense and corresponding boredom. If prior to this day he had thought that Professor Trelawney's class would eventually proof useful to him insofar as it would teach him how to reliably sleep with his eyes open, today the additional adversaries of tension and impatience made the otherwise familiar undertaking all the more challenging.

Three minutes. That was all she had asked for and exactly what she and Harry had agreed on. No more schemes and tricks and subterfuge. Just an old-fashioned race for the decisive win. It didn't exactly cater to her preferred set of skills, but so be it. Three minutes would be all she needed. The armchair was practically hers, as it should be. The last sixty seconds she watched ticking by almost as if hypnotized, her heart beating nearly twice as fast as the clock's lazy second hand was moving on its constant course. Her bag had long been packed, now was shouldered. Three, two, one…

"Where are you off to?" Hannah Abbott confusedly asked her on the quiet.

Already Hermione was standing on her feet, feeling the sudden and entirely unbidden attention of every last pair of eyes on her. Apparently, standing in the aisle in the middle of a class room with the lesson still underway was not as clandestine a thing to do as one might have thought. It had all gone a little more smoothly two weeks earlier.

She straightened the front of her blouse a little, avoiding eye-contact, then almost inaudibly cleared her throat a little. "I'm afraid I have some very important business to attend to."

And with that she turned and – eyes kept strictly on the ground – headed straight for the exit, her stride quick and purposeful yet not too hasty. As soon as the door fell shut behind her, however, she instantly broke into a run, and she ran as if her life depended on it. Or maybe just an Olympic medal.

Thirty seconds now. She would already be dashing through the hallways like crazy, because – truth be told – that's exactly what they both were being. No excuses on that front. They had agreed she would get a headstart of exactly one minute to compensate for her longer route back to Gryffindor Tower. It was fine. No problem at all. He was almost a respectable four inches taller than her. He was surprised sometimes at how much leg could fit into so small a person, but still – they had to be shorter than his, right? Certainly nicer to look at than his hairy bones. A lot. But he was faster, at any rate. Two minutes would suffice. He could already feel the welcoming embrace of his designated suede podium.

It was about ten seconds before the two-minute mark that he realized one tiny hindrance on his road to certain victory: he had completely neglected to think of how exactly he would go about leaving class early. Three, two, one… he looked up from his watch with his eyes as round as Professor Trelawney's tellingly murky crystal ball, his brain remaining frozen in a moment of general uselessness for three more costly seconds.

He shot up from his seat as if stung by a bee, the sudden sound of his chair scratching loudly over the wooden floor boards drawing all attention of the esoterically sedated crowd with immediate effect. He held his breath.

"The horror, the horror!" he then burst out, giving everybody in the circular room another mighty jolt. "Darkness falls!" He aimlessly raised his hands into the air. "The end is nigh!" His gaze was distant. "All our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death! Out, out, brief candle! Fly, you fools!"

And then he bolted straight for the trap door and down the winding stairs, while after a moment of dumbstruck stupor a positively swamped Sybill Trelawney marked down an _O_ for _Outstanding_ on her parchments next to the name of Harry Potter with trembling fingers, her heart all aflutter.

Up, up and up the stairs and straight through the corridor, her rapid footsteps echoing constantly from wall to wall as an incessant reminder of her reckless yet inarguably exciting rule-breaking. She had avoided the infamous vicissitude of the moving staircase, for although it could in theory be the fastest route to her destination one had to get really lucky for that to actually work out. And luck was something that Hermione Granger refused to rely on. Her minor detour statistically was the more dependable and therefore better choice. It would all work out according to plan.

Down, down and down the stairs and past the high-arching windows, dashing through the rays of golden daylight. What a nice day indeed, he thought. Maybe Hermione would like to go for a walk along the lakeshore later today. That is, if she wouldn't be too grumpy after losing her armchair entitlement to him, of course. What could he do to cheer her up, anyway? Surely she wouldn't be angry at him in earnest? He'd be winning fair and square, right? Did he really have to win, though? And would Hermione be angrier at him for deliberately letting her win? She'd see right through it, wouldn't she? She always did. And if in matters of competition there was one thing she hated more than losing it was winning at her opponent's clemency. No, he would give it his all. And then maybe go for a hug afterwards.

He swiftly cut the last corner with the confidence of a self-appointed if somewhat absentminded victor and then abruptly came to a full stop, not quite believing what his pupils dilated to behold. There, a couple of meters away and directly opposite of him, stood Hermione transfixed to the spot, in posture and expression a mirror image of Harry himself. Had his mind idled so much that his legs had followed suit? This was not supposed to happen!

Seconds passed in absolute silence as they sized each other up. Then, in astounding simultaneity, their gazes slowly drifted over to where the hidden portrait hole awaited, each of them just about equally far away from it. The flustered Fat Lady's eyes went back and forth between the two, her lips slightly parted in expectance of a dark red cherry that dangled from her stubby fingers an inch away from being tasted. Never mind whether the animated occupants of portraits even possessed an actual gustatory sense.

Harry and Hermione once more locked eyes, lids narrowing. His hand gave an almost imperceptible twitch. She minimally readjusted her legs, like a cat preparing to pounce. It was a bit like a climactic high noon scene in one of those Wild West movies starring John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, just that it wasn't actually noon. And there was no saloon. Nor were there any guns or tobacco involved. The participants also refrained from spitting, which too was likely for the better. But still. The tension electrified the very air around them, making hair stand on end as cold shivers ran down spines. The situation was so immensely intense, in fact, that the Fat Lady – her eyes slowly wandering from one duelist to the other – thought it sensible to move the much desired cherry just a little nearer to her expectant tongue, which came crawling out over her ripe bottom lip like an adventurously inclined pink snail.

And then it happened all at once. Both Harry and Hermione leapt forward at the same time and the Fat Lady gave a start and almost rolled right off her wobbly stool, crying out in a shrill and piercing voice as she flung her dear little cherry right out of the scenery captured within the frame of her picture. Hardly had she time to regain some balance or composure when already the two possessed students were but two last steps away, both of them shouting the password at her in raucous unison, and compelled by its uncommonly emphatic sound alone the portrait swung aside with most violent force just as the Fat Lady inevitably plummeted to the marble floor and onto her ample buttocks.

"Good gracious!" the poor – albeit not poorly – painted woman cried out in dismay, her high-pitched voice reverberating in the portrait hole through which Harry and Hermione now fought their way to the finish line, battling for every inch of advantage shoulder against shoulder, and it happened as it was bound to happen in this daring entanglement of limbs as Hermione's ankle got caught between Harry's calves and she tripped and he stumbled and she gasped and he reached for her even as he himself plunged into the common room right on her heels. Her momentum spun her around in mid-air and it was all that Harry could do to bring one hand to the back of her head a second before it would have hit the ground, and he barely managed to break his own fall with his remaining hand and a leg that somehow found some footing while Hermione's clutching fingers instinctively sought support at his arms.

Feathered though her fall had therewith been, it nevertheless did not fail to take the air right out of her lungs.

"Ouch," she feebly moaned with her eyes tightly shut, luckily feeling the brunt of the impact in her bottom, which – while not even half as voluminous as the Fat Lady's counterpart – was still far more serviceable a cushion for this kind of involuntary change into a supine position than her head would have been.

"Are you alright?" Harry's worried voice reached her consciousness, and only at the sound of it and the very close proximity of its source unmistakably derived therefrom did she begin to become fully aware of the particulars of their unexpected situation.

She opened her eyes and found herself regrettably unable to avoid catching her breath at the sight of his face a mere inch away from hers, his emerald gaze full of concern under a brow intently furrowed. The only other thing she was really cognizant of was his right hand that her head still safely rested in two inches above the solid ground.

His eyes perused her, swiftly sweeping over the shapes and surfaces of her features and then down the length of her body as much as their physical closeness allowed. When they came back up to questioningly lock with hers, she gulped as she felt the heat rise to her face. At least her voice cared to join it.

"Uh-huh," she finally gave answer, breathily at first. "I'm okay, really. What about you?"

Her own hands, as she now realized, held onto his arms just below his shoulders still, and still she didn't move them. In fact, she didn't move at all and in a rather ridiculous moment thought of how she surely had to look like somebody hit by a _Petrificus Totalus_. It felt a bit like it, too, although something indefinable appeared to be astir somewhere in her chest, which she ignored as best she could.

"Couldn't feel any better," Harry then replied, his eyes still boring into hers and his voice strangely husky. His words seemed to hover in the air between them for a moment, their meaning vague and tempting, unwilling to take shape.

Hermione gulped again. "We're both unscathed then," she tried to steer the moment into safer climes, despite the hidden parts of her that yearned to dare the contrary. "Shall we see if we can stand up before we get a roaring audience and gossip we'll never be able to live down?"

The change that washed over Harry's face and the speed at which it did so raised more than one question in her mind, his eyes nervously breaking contact with hers as if roused from some waking dream. "Of course," he began to sputter. "Yes, sure—uh—here, let me just..."

He hastily repositioned himself, rose up and pulled her with him in one fluent motion, and at last they were both on their own two feet once more. Harry made a step away from her that may have passed as perfectly casual if it hadn't been so overtly awkward. Insecurity had replaced the riddles in his voice and the probing in his eyes, his whole demeanor bashful. Quite accordingly he cleared his throat.

"Thank you for that, by the way," she said not solely to skip all that awkwardness, and he glanced at her quizzically. "If it hadn't been for your Quidditch-quick reaction I'd most likely be set to be in Madam Pomfrey's care right about now," she explained. "Now we're still on course to get through two whole months of school without either one of us ending up in the hospital wing, which personally I'd deem a nice change of pace."

His smile contributed its part to both of them feeling a bit more at ease again. "Right," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "We really avoided disaster by a hair's breadth there, eh? Literally, almost."

"Yeah," Hermione answered, her voice trailing off along with her thoughts. "I suppose we might've taken this a tad too far, huh?"

Harry contorted his face, scrunching up his nose, then nodded vehemently. Hermione's lips broke into a grin, then Harry's followed suit. A second later they both laughed out loud as the ridiculous dimensions of their recent behavior came unmasked at last, Hermione burying her face in both her hands and Harry shaking his head throughout. With their laughter subsiding they both ended up eyeing that unassuming piece of furniture that somehow had become the prized centerpiece of their competition.

"It _is_ an awfully nice place to sit, though," Hermione musingly observed.

"Definitely," Harry outright concurred, and they wordlessly considered the inviting armchair for a moment longer, deep in contemplation. He threw her a sidelong glance. "I mean, it is right there…"

"Quite the waste to have come so close to a definitive conclusion," Hermione readily opined.

Harry made a vague agreeing sound. "Wouldn't be unreasonable to say we might as well finish this properly."

"It's just a couple of steps, really."

"And we've got the worst behind us, too, with that stupidly tight portrait hole," said Harry. "Now there's just another armchair, a table and a couch in the way."

"And a fireplace nearby."

"It's childproof, really."

"Exactly."

They nodded their heads in unison, then slowly turned them in like manner until their eyes met yet again…

Harry lunged forward as Hermione did the same, arms flailing here and hair swirling there. With so little space between couch and table, Harry chose to hop onto the former and make for the target from there, though his footing suffered on the soft and sagging surface. Hermione dashed past the table on the other side, barely dodging a couple of magical toys that had likely been left there on the floor by some careless first-grader who was in for some serious prefect scolding. Harry leapt off the couch and towards the four-legged goal of all their matchlessly pointless aspirations just as Hermione, thrown off balance by her impromptu evasive maneuver, made a desperate plunge for it herself.

 _Phomp!_

 _Ploof!_

And squished between the armrests they finally found themselves sitting there side by side, the expressions of exhilaration on their flushed faces quickly changing into miens of sober perplexity.

"This," Harry sighed, "is not how the Germans did it."

~Ω~

* * *

 **Footstool note**

 _Golden Goal:_ The sports event referenced here is the 1996 European Football Championship. That's _actual football_ , for American readers. Don't get me started on _soccer_ and what you're calling football over there…

 _Swedish Proverb:_ This one's an allusion to the Swedish pop group ABBA, and more specifically their well-known song _The Winner Takes It All_. While I'm personally too young to have experienced them while they were still active, I do have parents. An odd bunch, those ones.

 _Harry's moment of (pop-)cultural clairvoyance:_ Verbatim references are made to Joseph Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_ (or just as well Francis Ford Coppola's loose adaptation of the same, _Apocalypse Now_ ), Shakespeare's _Macbeth_ and Tolkien's _The Lord of the Rings_. And to that eschatologically confused guy on the London streets with his placard on a pole. For how long has the end been nigh, now?


	3. Chapter 3

**III**

 _ **October's last Tuesday…**_

For the first time in a month, the last class of the day was once again perfectly mundane. For what may have been the first time ever in the middle of an ongoing lesson in her years at Hogwarts, Hermione Granger felt listless, dejected even. She was inattentive and unfocused, her mind most wayward. Her thoughts kept going in circles and as such never got anywhere, or at least not anyplace they hadn't already been before. She was at best distantly aware of Professor Burbage mentioning the words politics and corruption on more than one occasion over the course of her lecture, so Hermione's best guess was that today's lesson had to have something to do with words that were synonymous in both the Muggle and the wizarding world.

The worst part was, as she eventually was perturbed to discover, that she didn't even care, for today not even her usual zest for education came to full fruition. The return to order and routine – two things Hermione would generally have a hard time denying her fondness of – surprisingly led to something more akin to disappointment rather than the familiar relief. She was reluctant to fully admit it to herself, but it appeared that for once she did indeed miss the daring deviation, the little touch of mischief and the unapologetic silliness that she had rarely engaged of her own volition before, yet in this particular instance thoroughly enjoyed. Granted, compared to some of their previous deeds and mishaps this had been safely on the harmless side of things, but that aspect only contributed further to the immutable realization that she indeed missed it dearly.

The simple fact of the matter was that there was just nothing to look forward to at all on this bleak and dreary October day, and the constant deluge outside didn't exactly alleviate Hermione's mood as much as it accentuated it. Whence the dilemma? Well, after that spectacularly inconclusive tiebreaker a week ago Harry and Hermione had ultimately elected to proclaim maturity and do the prudent thing: to give up their armchair feud and settle sensibly, wisely and – above all – boringly for peace. No more weekly races, no more unheeding exhilaration, no more thrill of anticipation in this last class of every Tuesday as each of them got ready to outdo the other and claim the leather throne. And no more chance of almost falling to the ground and being caught just in the nick of time. No, no more of any of that.

"Sic parvis magna," Hermione glumly mumbled when after a depressingly normal-paced walk back to Gryffindor Tower she reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, who even while swinging aside already queried with a cherry between her teeth, "Why ish everybody in shuch a melansholy mood today?"

But Hermione paid it little to no mind. Instead she entered the common room fully expecting to find Harry sitting in his favorite spot, as they had also agreed that it would be fine to do so for anyone who – by ordinary and non-crazy means – arrived there first. Her expectations were not quite met, which she in turn met with her head canted to one side and a smile tucked away in a corner of her lips.

"What are you doing, Harry?"

Even as the addressed looked up from his reading material, his own smile not tucked away at all at the mere sight of her, Hermione already knew quite well what his answer would be. He had somehow managed to catch her off guard a bit with being so inimitably _Harry_ , but he would certainly not surprise her with his reasons for doing so.

"I saved you a seat," he said, practically beaming at her. " _The_ seat, to be precise. And I really did actively save it, mind you. Just a minute ago someone was about to irreverently plant his unworthy butt there, if you can believe it, and without looking up from my book I said, like in a really low and subtly threatening voice, 'You don't wanna sit there, mate,' and he immediately did a runner." Harry took a moment to proudly nod away in appreciation of his own accomplishment. "Granted, the bugger was eleven years old, but still. I'm feeling pretty validated in my masculinity right now."

Hermione shook her head at him as her smile came creeping out of the corner of her lips to conquer the rest of her face. "Harry…"

He emphatically shook his own head at that, forestalling her entirely expected objection. "It's unfair, okay?" he set out to make his point. "We already established – and quite lengthily, too – that I have the shorter way back, so without any clever concoctions on your end, and barring the occasional thespian Trelawney episode, I'd basically always be here before you, which ultimately means you'd never again get your ten-minute Tuesday afternoon breather. And that's just plain unacceptable."

"But—"

"Nope. You deserve it, 'mione," he resolutely stood his ground. "A day of school is like work to you. Exciting and wonderful work, of course, but work nonetheless. My Tuesday schedule ends on a double period of Divination, which really boils down to an afternoon nap as it is. If anything, I'd need some considerable amounts of caffeine at this time of day to get the augury-induced sleep out of my bones."

He watched her intently as she nibbled on her lower lip, her eyes flitting over to the armchair. Indecision could not be written more clearly on a human face. "If it helps," Harry therefore set out to nudge her along, "and knowing you, it will, you'd do me a favor too. I mean it. I really, _really_ want you to have this. These ten precious minutes after the last class of every Tuesday. They should be yours. Even that potentially traumatized eleven-year-old that I know you feel kind of bad for does not deserve this brief respite as much as you do, because nobody else in this house works as hard as you and nobody else in the world expects less compensation for it than you – asks for less in return from those that depend on them. Heck, you ask for nothing even when you are giving everything."

She just stared at him then, stunned and speechless, and he didn't know what exactly to make of that. An uncomfortable surge of self-consciousness overcame him and eventually he averted his eyes from the unblinking intensity of her gaze and rubbed the back of his neck. "Didn't mean to get so effusive there," he mumbled abashedly, then gesticulated impatiently toward the markedly vacant armchair. "Will you just sit down already? Just… just sit, girl."

Struggling to simultaneously suppress the insistent smile as well as the blush that threatened to take her cheeks, Hermione lowered her head and quietly walked over to the awaiting armchair. She sat down slowly and gingerly let her shoulder bag slide onto the floor next to it, then crossed her legs and folded her hands on top of her knees with some well-measured deliberation, her eyes roaming her surroundings as if they beheld the common room for the very first time at least from this particular perspective. She noticed Harry throwing her a cursory glance or two but made an effort not to meet them.

"See," he eventually spoke up, pointing at something above Hermione's right shoulder, "I even renewed that conjured sign of yours, keeping it official. The chair is yours. All is as it should be."

"Did you cast the spell anew?" she asked after taking an appraising look at the result. "Looks pretty good to me for someone who claimed he couldn't do it like that just weeks ago."

Harry scratched his jawline a little. "Well, that's, uh, that's actually a real sign right there, made of solid wood. I only used magic for the engraving." Hermione turned to him with more of the general, all-encompassing incredulity that she presently found difficult to completely shake off. "I just wanted something more permanent," Harry explained defensively, embarrassed anew. "Didn't take me too long. No big deal."

By now Hermione had given up on attempting to suppress anything, be it smile or blush or whatever else might go on in a person's face. "You're taking this rather seriously after all, aren't you?"

"Not overly," Harry insisted. "I suppose I just wanted you to know that while we had this slightly barmy competition going for the past couple of weeks, I never had the intention of actually taking this away from you. Ever since you described to me what it means to you, well… as much of it as I assume may have been spoken in jest, I'm sure there's some truth to it as well. You treasure these ten minutes. And even if it brightens your day just a little to have them, I'll gladly make sure you'll get them. Property of Hermione J. Granger, signed by Harry J. Potter."

Flustered and befuddled all the more by the things he kept saying to her, Hermione leaned to the side once more to take a closer look at the wooden sign. And indeed, beneath the original declaration of ownership – he had even imitated her handwriting, and not badly at that – was now also his personal signature.

"Resistance is futile," Harry told her with a wide grin when she turned back to him with a look of unmitigated bewilderment on her face. "And don't you worry, I'll still have my evening hours in that chair. You know, when it's cold and dark outside, raining or snowing, and the warmth of the fire radiates from the hearth, engulfing you like a shield against the night… those are my favorite times in that place, anyway."

"Oh, I see," said Hermione, glowering playfully as she drummed her fingers on the armrest. "That's the way it is. You secure the prime time session while fobbing me off with these lousy ten minutes in mediocre daylight ambiance. It's all beginning to make sense now."

Harry reopened the book in his lap with a chuckle and a shake of the head. "Hey, it's not my fault you tend to spend the most pleasant hours of the day buried in homework and extracurricular studying," he said. "Besides, you're always invited to join me."

With his eyes focused on his book as he scanned the pages for the line where last he had left off, Harry missed Hermione's reaction to his innocently incidental remark completely; missed the way she once again goggled at him in utter disbelief; missed how her brow then crinkled with lines of contemplation; missed how she went back to scrutinizing him closely after that. Instead he mistook her silence for a sign that she had finally accepted the arrangement and moved on to making the most of the remaining minutes of her timed relaxation.

"I am?" he heard Hermione speak up after a while, the context of her question by now entirely lost on him until elaboration followed. "You—you mean we could share… ? Share the chair?"

He didn't look up from his book when he answered, instead electing to do two things at the same time and consequentially doing neither of them particularly well. "Sure, why not? I mean… huh?" He looked at her now, a bit disoriented, knowing neither what he had just read nor what exactly he had said.

"It _is_ a rather large specimen of its kind," Hermione observed parenthetically enough. "And although last week's tiebreaker miserably failed to break any ties, it did at the very least illustrate that it's indeed perfectly possible for two people roughly of our size and proportions to be seated here properly and in reasonable comfort."

"Right," said Harry, if only because there really was nothing to dispute in her assessment.

She looked at him uncertainly, and he looked back at her uncomprehendingly. "So… d'you want to give it a try?"

His gaze turned vacant as understanding continued to elude him for a second or five. "Oh," he then ejected. "You mean… wait, you—you want me to sit there with you?"

Immediately Hermione seemed flustered again. "You brought it up first! I was merely… evaluating…"

"It was just—I only meant—well, I didn't think you'd… evaluate… right away."

"Then why did you say it if you didn't mean it?" she challenged him, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I didn't say I didn't mean it."

"So did you?"

"Did what?"

"Mean it."

"Why wouldn't I? It's not unreasonable. It's a big armchair."

"Then why are you still sitting on that lousy sofa over there? Come on, walk the talk."

"Oh, I'm walking."

"I can only hear you talking."

With grim determination Harry closed his book, rose to his feet and strode over to the armchair. Hermione had already slid over onto one half of it, so Harry went forth to take the other. About half a human being – or Dobby, perhaps – could possibly still have fit between them. Stiff and tense, neither of them looked at the other.

"See," Hermione eventually said, "works perfectly well."

"Aye," Harry concurred. "Now all that's left to do is for you to relax, or else I might think you're afraid to touch me."

"I'm not afraid to touch you," she stated matter-of-factly.

At that he looked at her, his smile teasingly crooked. "Then walk the talk."

She met his gaze, her expression unreadable as she scrutinized him unflinchingly. Then suddenly and without any forewarning she just planted her hand right across his face – haphazardly so and yet careful not to touch his glasses. He laughed. "Splendid," he assessed, his voice muffled behind her palm. "I don't think I've ever been this comfortable in my life."

She retracted her hand and smiled at him, then shifted in her seat a little so that she wasn't pressed against the armrest anymore, and finally their bodies met in the middle, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh.

"That better?" she asked him.

"You tell me," he replied. "I want you to be able to savor these armchair minutes, and I'm sure you're aware by now that I happen to be quite the mountain of a man, so if this isn't working for you—"

He trailed off and grinned at her pleasantly interrupting laughter. "I think I'll be fine," she then assured him in faux seriousness, patting his purportedly mountainous leg a little.

"Very well," said Harry, still smiling as once more he returned his attention to his book. "Let's get started on this mysterious relaxing business, then."

Resting the ankle of one leg on the knee of the other, Harry leisurely kept turning the pages, and next to him Hermione had leaned back and eventually closed her eyes, making Harry think at some point that their chosen activities seemed strangely inverted. Naturally, she didn't notice how he occasionally looked up from his book to watch her instead with a secret little smile, a twitch on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes, just as he in turn was never aware of the fleeting glances she stole at him from time to time with a mixture of silent wonder and rumination on her placid features.

"I don't know about you," Harry conversationally offered after minutes had passed in agreeable silence, "but maybe I might even see myself potentially getting sort of somewhat used to this."

He did not take his eyes off the pages of his book as he said this, nor did Hermione open hers when smiling from ear to ear she softly replied, "Me too."

~•~

 _ **The time that followed…**_

Over the course of the next few weeks, every afternoon of every Tuesday after their separate last classes of the day, Harry and Hermione would meet without exception – sometimes in the common room with the one already waiting for the other, sometimes by sheer happenstance out at the portrait of the Fat Lady – to sit side by side on that one particular armchair that had for some inexplicable reason become such an unlikely centerpiece of their togetherness.

Swiftly their weekly engagement had become a pleasant and highly cherished sort of routine, anticipated in secrecy for the remaining six days of any week by both of them with latent eagerness. All through grey November and into whitening December they maintained their regular meeting of shared comfort and convenience: six Tuesdays in uninterrupted succession, over the course of which the ten minutes of Hermione's meticulously timed relaxation soon developed a tendency to most recklessly turn into their distant cousins of twelve, seventeen and once even twenty-six and a half minutes.

Sometimes Harry was the one reading a book while Hermione leaned back into her corner with her eyes closed in deep contentedness, sometimes it was the other way around, and other times again they did both the same, at some point perhaps even leaning towards each other just a little bit. Occasionally Hermione would stretch out her legs across his lap and out over the armrest and he would prop his book against them, while in another instance she had her legs drawn up to her chest, which Harry may eventually have taken as an implicit invitation to put a pillow on her knees and then rest his head on top of it.

Most of the time they hardly spoke a word, inclined instead to savor the tender understanding and the quiet, peaceful comfort of unreflecting intimacy. Not that either of them would have openly described it as such. At other times, of course, the quiescence was carelessly abandoned in favor of animated chatter and unburdened laughter as they exchanged tales and tidbits about Divination and Muggle Studies and the daily affairs of life at Hogwarts. Some particularly engrossing or inspiring passages from their respective books were read to the attentive other, and just the once they would nearly have dozed off completely if it hadn't been for a sudden ruckus in the common room at the arrival of a band of some younger and unapologetically heedless rascals.

Their poses changed, though never the side that each of them sat on. The specifics of their activities varied, yet never did they deviate from the routine itself; never did they sit together at any other time of day or on any other day but Tuesday. As if bound by some unspoken law they adhered to the nature of their arrangement, never – at least not outside of thoughts unvoiced– questioning it. That way, for each of them and unbeknownst to the other, it was far easier to not get too lost in contemplation over these peculiar recent shifts in that ever-fluent dynamic between them. That way, it retained at least some outward semblance to a game of sorts – a harmless thing that need not be pondered over all that much.

There were reactions from their peers, of course. Furtive glances now and then, some whispers here and there and maybe the occasional suggestive snicker, but strangely enough it seemed that their fellow Gryffindors had as quickly grown used to the weekly sight of them in their armchair as Harry and Hermione themselves had to being in the entangled position to be sighted there in the first place. By the third Tuesday they were seen sitting there nobody really appeared to look twice anymore, and the fact that their housemates had apparently agreed on casually dubbing the event _H &H's Armchair Tryst_ was met with no more than a dismissive shake of the head and maybe some more or less articulate snorting and scoffing by the affected party of _H and H_. Such blatantly puerile nonsense was hardly worthy of their recognition. Or at least not publicly and in the company of the other.

Their mutual resolution to evade any possible outspoken examination of these newest developments between them proved remarkably successful. In fact, each of them was – independently of the other – in equal denial about the existence of any noteworthy changes to speak of. Change is, after all, far more salient a thing when it happens either literally or proverbially overnight than when it happens gradually, incrementally – almost imperceptibly. Alas, it can still hit you over the head and knock you over once you finally see it in all its gradually solidified glory, of course.

Harry and Hermione, meanwhile, were very busy not seeing it, if only for so stubbornly refusing to look its way. Only in the lone and quiet hours of the night, each of them lying in their own bed with just a couple of doors and worlds of thought between them, their minds as curious as they were cautious, they sometimes dared to tread uncharted realms, eventually falling asleep adrift in vast oceans of ambiguity between the familiar closeness that had matured and deepened over the years and something else, something younger and more visceral that seemed unwilling to yet be grasped. Their constant companions on these inner travels, frequently following them even through the swirling mists of their dreams, were fleeting glances and penetrating gazes of emerald green and chocolate brown, their implications nebulous, their meaning never found.

Once, on a late Friday evening, Hermione gathered her odds and ends after a pleasantly thorough and thoroughly pleasant studying session that, when the common room had started emptying, she had moved from her usual spot in that corner underneath a westward window onto the by then invitingly deserted couch, nearer to where Harry just so happened to be spending some more quality time in the armchair. She rose to her feet with the proper words of parting already on their way from her mind to her tongue, yet never they found their way out and instead she ended up mutely watching Harry for a little while, whose distant gaze was lost amongst the dying embers in the hearth.

She was startled when his head suddenly turned her way. "Oh," he said, a corner of his lips curling into a gentle smile. "Time for bed, huh?"

"Yes," Hermione confirmed, a bit muddled at feeling caught in some kind of forbidden act, which was so ridiculous that she got a little annoyed with herself. "I suppose it is. As good a time as any, really. And I'm super tired, honestly. Even though I spent the last two hours sitting… but still. I mean, I could probably keep sitting for a little while longer without falling asleep, but generally speaking I think it's really time for some horizontal activities now. I mean—" She shook herself rather violently. "No activities, basically. None."

A small twitch flitted across Harry's lips as he gave a vague nod. "Okay, uh… well, good night then."

"Good night, Harry," she returned the wish, and then her eyes inadvertently lingered on the armchair for a moment and on the very spot that would be hers right there next to him. When her consciousness gave itself a slap she found him staring at her intently, and she nervously forced a stilted smile onto her lips and skedaddled out of there, leaving Harry behind to struggle with the question that had come dangerously close to escaping from his mouth but now was stuck in his throat as much as on his mind: that daring question that could not merely have shaken the foundations of the cosmos itself, but also, coincidentally, have broken their trusted modus operandi.

In the absence of any cosmic cataclysm to speak of, they sat together again the following Tuesday afternoon, and this time they did so longer than they ever had before, ultimately parting ways only when an immensely irritated Ron approached them briskly to ask whether Harry had perchance forgotten that he himself had scheduled a Quidditch team practice for exactly that hour. As it turned out, he had.

It was the second week of December, on the Tuesday that would have marked their seventh joint recreational armchair session, that their routine got disrupted after all.

"The very word is stupid, really," Hermione continued their ongoing exchange as she ducked her head and scrambled through the portrait hole with Harry trailing right behind her. "I'm your girl and I'm a friend—I mean, I'm a girl and I'm your friend is what I mean. Why are people so obsessed with putting the two together and then make such a fuss about it?"

"So, uh," Harry wondered uncertainly, "are you from now on gonna call yourself my girlfriend in defiance of semantics?"

"Well," he heard her answer as she stepped into the light of the common room, "it would certainly be easier than having to correct the meddling, madding crowd all the damn time."

He was just about to say something in return when he stopped short at the sound of a mystified little _Huh_ coming from Hermione. "Huh?" he readily queried, his attention still all on her as he came to a halt at her side. Then he followed her fixed gaze to the cause of her puzzlement and found – much to his own subsequent perplexity – the armchair they had so naturally been heading for already taken.

"Huh," he commented.

A perfectly relaxed Katie Bell stretched her legs and arms with her eyes closed, making hardly an effort to suppress the yawn that her lungs demanded. Right in the magnificent, gaping middle of it her eyelids fluttered open and with a start that almost made her choke on her own breath she suddenly became aware of the two people staring at her with strikingly gormless expressions, making her feel as if she were one of the more insipid pieces at a modern art exhibit. Maybe next to the piece of wire on a pile of dead leaves – a meditation on the duality of man, no doubt.

"Oh!" Katie then exclaimed in apparent realization, returning the favor to Harry and Hermione as they got jerked from their stupor. She looked at both of them in turn. "I'm so sorry, guys. It's your weekly date, isn't it? I was so exhausted I couldn't have said what day it was, honestly. Suffered through one of Snape's kindly unannounced two-hour exams just now and this armchair's as far as I got before I simply crumpled. Come on, I'll carry myself up to my bed and crash there. The armchair's all yours."

Nonplussed by the whole situation and then even more so by their housemate's sincerity, Hermione needed a second longer than usual to collect her thoughts. "D-don't be silly," she then forestalled Katie just as the latter was about to get up. "This is ridiculous."

"It is?" Harry wondered out loud. Already he had been regarding his Quidditch teammate with an amicable smile of appreciation and gratitude. His head swirled around to face Hermione, then back to Katie. "I mean, it is. Obviously."

"Despite what that sign over there says," Hermione set out to elaborate, "the chair isn't actually, truly ours. It never was. And no one should have to inconvenience themselves and relinquish it to us the moment we show up. The thought alone is preposterous. It's like something Draco Malfoy would expect of his Slytherin underlings."

"That's… true," Harry reluctantly had to concede, raking his hand through the hair at the back of his head.

"It's really no problem," Katie interposed unsurely, frozen on the edge of her seat with her hands on the armrests like a statue caught forever in the astounding and deeply unsettling act of neither sitting nor standing quite right.

Harry inconspicuously glanced at Hermione. "But it is," she insisted. Harry nodded hastily and focused on the highly captivating patterns of the rug beneath his feet again. "You have as much right to sit there as anybody else in this house and you were here first. So there's really no discussion to be had. Let's just be adults here, even though technically we aren't, except in accordance with wizarding law we actually are – well, except for Harry, that is." Harry frowned and clicked his tongue. "Anyway, let's be reasonable human beings and just proceed with our daily business as usual, shall we? So, please, Katie… just take your time, catch your breath. All is well."

Katie remained uncertain, yet relaxed a bit. "Well, if you say so. I'd be happy to leave you two to it, though. I think it's a cute thing you've got going there."

Hermione's features hardened impressively fast, her lips growing thin and colorless – which was somewhat at odds with the distinctive tinge of color her cheeks took on. "I don't profess to know the things you've heard," she said, her voice ostensibly calm and composed, "though I'm sure I can imagine well enough, but I can assure you that it's nothing but typical, unsubstantiated gossip and as such utterly meaningless and devoid of any relation to reality." She took a breath. "It's just a harmless little frivolity that people have blown completely out of proportion, as should be expected. Both Harry and I can go perfectly well without it. It's really not that important, okay?"

Katie stared at her, then blinked. "Okay."

"Okay," Hermione echoed in a smaller voice, her indignation subsiding into a multilayered sort of embarrassment. "I'll… be going, then. Up the—upstairs." She threw a sidelong glance at Harry. "What about you?"

"Oh, I'm going upstairs, too. Just… a different set of stairs, of course."

"We'll be going our separate ways, then."

"Exactly," he said. "Off we go into casual separation."

"Perfect."

"Indeed."

They smiled awkwardly at each other, then turned towards Katie who had followed their exchange with ping pong eyes and waved her goodbye even more awkwardly. As they left, each of them heading for the staircase that led up to their respective and very separate dorm rooms, Katie Bell's gaze followed them, one dubious eyebrow arched up high.

When the two were gone from sight she shrugged her shoulders and mumbled sotto voce, "Where there's fire there's a dragon," and with that leaned back into the upholstery picturing a full-grown Hungarian Horntail that _some people_ insisted on trying to keep in a doghouse that also, incidentally, was on fire.

~Ω~


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note:** Last part of this little armchair intermezzo. 20,000 words. Told you so. And here we are. So, in case you were enjoying yourself: I'm sorry. In case you're despising everything you're reading here: You're welcome. Stanrick – reliably keeping things short for the convenience of those that don't like his stuff while simultaneously disappointing those that do. Can't tell me I don't got my priorities straight!

Jokes aside, thanks for every reader's interest and all your reviews. They are, as they always have been, sincerely appreciated on this end. I hope I'll manage to finish some of my other Potter-related stories sooner rather than later. After all, this one was really just a side-(side-)project born out of desperation.

* * *

 **IV**

 ** _The week after…_**

Not a single syllable suggesting even as much as a hint of correlation to _the incident_ was uttered for six whole days. Perhaps solely because of their mutually harbored suspicion that talking about it would have been tantamount to admitting the existence of anything worth calling an incident that had better be talked about in the first place. They both felt it was, naturally, but since they did not talk about it neither of them knew what the other felt and therefore judged that not talking about it was the most advisable course of action, and whenever cause and effect are identical it becomes really hard to clearly discern just what exactly is going on.

And so during these days neither of them was ever found sitting in the armchair in the afternoon hours and only Harry sat there occasionally in the late evenings, though for some reason – and no matter how hard he tried – never quite as comfortably as he used to. Hermione for her part seemed to avoid it completely, but since regrettably there is always only one Tuesday per week it was hard to tell for sure just how far her avoidance went and whether it could be ascribed to some sort of deliberation.

Every day Harry found himself at least once on the cusp of saying something, of asking and inquiring about it, of mentioning it at all. Yet never he did, for something held him back. Something that bothered him more than he cared to admit to himself and that was amplified with every passing day by the constant echo of Hermione's voice in his mind, speaking words he wished she had never said. Whether she truly meant them or not, that was the question impossible to answer on his own. What exactly he hoped she'd feel in earnest, that was the question almost too daunting to even tackle at all. Together they combined into a fabulously snowy mid-December week that drove Harry noticeably closer to a more or less voluntary stay within the invitingly padded walls of St. Mungo's mental ward.

When Tuesday finally arrived, instead of that gradually increasing tingling of anticipation he had come to associate with it over the course of recent weeks, it brought with it a surge of dreadful tension. When after one of the most thoroughly absentminded days of his illustrious career as a habitually sluggard student he arrived back in the common room, he stopped short a step away from the armchair, eyed it with the reluctance of indecision and eventually ended up pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace, his mind in symmetry to his motion ceaselessly bouncing from yes to no and back again.

With a wince he froze in place when he turned on his heels for precisely the umpteenth time and suddenly found Hermione standing a couple of steps away from him near the far end of the table.

"Hey," she greeted him a bit timidly.

"Hey, uh, yeah," Harry presently began to stammer in response, "I's just—was just walking off a cramp that I suffered whuh—while casually sitting down and…" Hermione's eyes drifted to the one place where he'd normally be doing that right about now, finding not a wrinkle in the cushions and a neatly folded blanket in the middle of the seat: an orderly display that was restored automatically over night in these more peculiar parts of Britain. The look she gave him was enough to make him drop the nonsense.

"I wasn't sure we were still doing this," he bashfully confessed with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jeans. To see her smile at him warmly calmed him a bit, but there was something else in her eyes as well.

"I was hoping we would," Hermione answered sincerely, "but right now I'm actually on the hop to an unscheduled prefect meeting that I've just been called to on my way back here. Something about a Christmas-related, logistical disaster. Maybe Santa Claus got his visa revoked. I don't know. I should basically be there right now, but I wanted to see you first in case… well, just in case you were maybe waiting for me, maybe."

"Oh," said Harry, dropping his head. "Okay." And shrugging his shoulder he added, "Well, it's really not that important, right? I mean, you pointed out as much last week." He immediately regretted the way that came out. It sounded snide and petty, as troubled thoughts are wont to do when after being kept inside for too long they eventually come out in one fermented burst of spite. "Sorry," he was quick to apologize, "I didn't mean to say that… like that."

She faintly exhaled a sigh. "Well, I didn't mean what I said last week, either."

He looked up at her at that, the hesitant hint of a lopsided smile on his lips, and recited in good humor, "When you don't mean what you say the way you say it, maybe you should change the way you say it to match what you mean to say."

It was a verbatim quotation of one Hermione Jane Granger that originally poor Ronald Weasley had been on the receiving end of. He was still in convalescence.

The quoted witch smiled despite herself and mused aloud, "I cannot quite decide whether being beaten by myself makes me feel smart or stupid." They amusedly regarded one another for a moment before she turned more serious again. "Frankly though, I didn't mean it at all, really. I was just annoyed at—at the things people say."

"It's okay," he assured her. "I understand. I'm just glad to know that… you know… that you don't actually feel like that. About this. Because otherwise I would've been alone in… not feeling like that. About this."

Amusement resurfaced on Hermione's features. "Are we clear on the way we feel about this, then?"

He scrunched up his nose. "Doesn't really sound like it, does it?"

They shared a short but heartfelt bout of laughter at that which prompted each of them in secrecy to wonder when the sound of the other's joy had begun making something flutter in their general belly button vicinity. When they stopped a bit abruptly and at the same time, it nearly made them laugh all over again.

"So," Harry, leaning against the mantelpiece on an elbow, instead offered conversationally, "how's that urgent prefect meeting going for you, anyway?"

"Goodness!" Hermione exclaimed with a panicky glance at her watch, hastily readjusting her shoulder bag. "I'll be the last one to arrive!"

"Your name will be ruined," Harry ominously foretold, "your legacy forfeit."

She glowered at him, though her comically puckered lips belied the severity of her narrowed eyes. "See you later, Harry," she drily said her farewell, already stepping away from him.

"Hey," he softly made her halt and turn around expectantly. "Next Tuesday, then?"

Her smile lit up her face. "It's a date."

And it was a good thing that she had a reasonable excuse to leave in that moment, so that she didn't have to share with Harry the mighty blush on her face that judging by the way it felt was now most likely lighting up the whole room. Then, all of a sudden, a thought entered her mind that caught her off guard.

"Oh no," she exhaled, half way between Harry and the portrait hole. She turned around again to find him looking at her questioningly. "Next Tuesday is Christmas Eve."

Comprehension set in on Harry's features, and it didn't look like the most pleasant kind despite his best effort to hide its nature behind a mask of nonchalance. "Oh, right. Yeah, you'll be leaving for home on Saturday, of course."

"Hmm," Hermione vaguely made, pensively cocking her head to the side.

Harry studiously avoided looking at her and focused instead on the dark and empty fireplace, where no traces of any ashes were left since those too had a tendency to just vanish over night as if by magic. Which incidentally was literally the case here.

"Unless I don't, of course," Hermione's voice then reached into his absent musings.

He chuckled quietly. "That's some solid logic right there." It took a moment longer, but eventually his head jerked up and he stared at her with eyes bewildered under a furrowed brow. "Wait," he said, then strangely enough waited himself for a moment. "D'you mean… ? You don't mean…"

She gave him a curious, oddly significant look and heaved a no less meaningful sigh, which in its entirety was a combination of events that confused Harry to no small degree. "I really have a meeting to attend now," she told him, "so I hope you'll excuse me as I leave you to it and let you figure this one out by yourself."

He watched her turn and vanish through the portrait hole with his mouth stupidly agape, then remained like that for longer than he would later care to admit. And then he waved it off.

"I'll just ask her for help later," he said to himself, and with that made his way up to his dorm room, having momentarily forgotten all about the armchair.

~•~

 ** _A glimpse of Saturday…_**

As it turned out, Hermione had meant exactly what she had hoped Harry would want her to mean and precisely what Harry had certainly hoped she would mean but hadn't really dared to assume she actually did mean. And so Hermione did in fact not join the host of students that left the castle on Saturday morning and in a convoy of carriages plowed their way through thick layers of fresh snow, down to the train station where the steaming Hogwarts Express was already waiting to carry them home where they would spend the holidays with their families.

"Are you really sure about this?" Harry asked her while from an open window in a third floor hallway they watched the procession trundle in tandem down the hill slopes. And of course he did, even at this point in time when suddenly changing her mind could realistically only have resulted in two weeks of excessive moping, since she hadn't even bothered to pack her things.

"No, Harry. I'm obviously not," she answered wryly. "Which is exactly why I'm standing here right now and why I have spoken of nothing but my sincerest delight at the prospect of spending the holidays here at Hogwarts with you… a-and the other people… persons… of course."

"Ah, yes," he said with a smirk tugging at his lips. "The people persons are really what it's all about." She playfully stuck out her tongue at him. "What about your parents, though? They won't think I'm holding you hostage here, will they?"

"Don't be silly," Hermione reassured him. "Clearly you aren't even part of the explanation." He gave her a puzzled and maybe minimally worried look. "I was perfectly candid and told them that, while I generally take them to be very agreeable people persons, given the choice I simply prefer to spend Christmas with the most important piece of inanimate furniture in my life." Already he laughed as she went on, "I told them all about my precious armchair and they're both quite reasonable as far as non-Hermiones go, so they couldn't possibly expect to be able to compete with that."

Harry grinningly shook his head at her. "You're in quite the humorous mood today, I have to say."

"I told you," she said, "I'm just generally delighted." And she smiled the kind of smile that rendered her words redundant, unknowingly making Harry feel as if he could float straight out through the window and up towards the cloudy sky amongst countless dancing snowflakes – which fortunately he refrained from actually attempting.

"Gosh, it's so beautiful outside," Hermione marveled, leaning out over the window sill to properly take in the view of the surrounding landscape covered snugly in a gapless coat of white. She turned to him with a twinkle of excitement in her eyes. "D'you want to go for a walk around the grounds?"

Harry amusedly perked an eyebrow at her. "We have a whole castle practically to ourselves and the first thing you wanna do is leave it?"

Again that radiant smile of hers. "Come on," she urged him gently, and taking his hand in hers she dragged him with her – and not the slightest thought of resistance ever entered his mind.

~•~

 ** _A Christmas Tuesday…_**

Though seldom more than two dozen students stayed at Hogwarts during Christmas break, each and every one of them could always tell from looking at the extensive preparations alone that they were all in for quite memorable a treat, and usually every attendant of the school made an effort to at least once experience the festivities in the elaborately decorated Great Hall and their especially cozy common room equivalents. Even for those young Muggle-born witches and wizards that had eventually grown at least somewhat accustomed to the literally magical world they had unforeseeably been thrown into at the age of eleven, Christmas at Hogwarts was still a decidedly different deal – a different kind of magic. It was nothing short of the surreal manifestation of everything even the most shamelessly mawkish Christmas songs and stories they had all grown up with could possibly evoke in fantastic imagery. Lo and behold, even the elves were real! A bit weird, frankly, but real.

And thus, even though the castle was thoroughly depopulated due to the annual holiday exodus, the whole place was still brimming with its own kind of energy. It was calmer than usual, for sure. More homely and unhurried, as if everything was in half a dreamy winter slumber with even the spires of the castle itself covered in blankets of snow. Life slowed down a bit in the best way possible. Even when teachers and house-elves alike were busy decorating and preparing in the halls and corridors, even when dozens of cooing owls arrived carrying packages in all different shapes and sizes, it never seemed rushed or frantic. Like Hagrid trudging through drifts of snow and into the halls of the castle with the most enormous of trees in tow (which would later be replanted to grow even taller, because magic) it all kept to a certain rhythm, clad in a mellow if always faintly jingly melody.

As for Harry and Hermione, well, these two minds were first and foremost otherwise preoccupied, especially once Christmas Eve – and more importantly, Tuesday – was finally upon them. They certainly had not mentioned it again, but there was still the unresolved matter of that thing that eventually and most imprudently had been dubbed a date and that was set to occur on that very day. One of the more obvious problems was, of course, that there weren't any classes to be had anymore, and that they just so happened to have taken with them Harry's and Hermione's best excuse for their shared armchair recuperation, for how well could something be called recuperation when there was hardly anything to recuperate from?

There was no schedule, no fixed simultaneity of events – nothing that would conveniently nudge them both into that armchair at just the right time. Happenstance and serendipity were out of the equation. Now, suddenly, it fully relied on their own volition. Never mind that they already spent most of the time of any given day in each other's company as it was. Never mind that moment amidst the falling snow when Hermione had ended up lying on top of him, laughing at first and then quietly looking at him with her bottom lip tucked underneath her front teeth, the flimsy puffs of their quickened breaths commingling in what little air was left between them. Never mind that at one point it had taken a most curious look of Professor McGonagall for them to realize that they had somehow completely forgotten that their hands were still intertwined and that they could not have said how exactly that had come to be in the first place. Surely, somehow that whole bothersome Christmas spirit had to be at fault.

After lunch in the Great Hall, where the few remaining students from all four houses – and yes, even Slytherin – gathered at a single table right in the middle of the hall as per custom at this time of year, the afternoon progressed uneventfully, a certain armchair in the Gryffindor common room remaining altogether vacant with no one even there to notice. And while two minds at least sometimes wandered from whatever they were supposed to be focused on at any given moment and from across the distance thought of the armchair instead as it stood there emptily, patiently, neither one of these two anonymous minds could entirely avoid feeling a bit silly for it. And even as outside the sky cleared up just as its blue tint deepened into black and evening took over, things remained rather foggy on the inside, figuratively speaking.

But then at last, after spending most of the day on their legs and all of it quite busily, having helped Hagrid here and there, having joined – naturally at Hermione's pleading request – Dobby and the rest of the house-elves in the kitchens for their annual, traditionally shambolic but ultimately impressively successful creation of exceedingly delicious Christmas biscuits, and then having taken another stroll out in the snow under a starry sky after a sumptuous dinner in the Great Hall, they finally arrived back in the common room utterly and completely knackered. In fact, Harry was exhausted enough to only become fully aware of his whereabouts after he had already dropped down into the armchair like a sack of potatoes with just about as much conscious thought.

He tensed a bit at the realization, then felt properly stupid for it and then tensed a bit more when he saw Hermione taking off her shoes and sitting down on the couch with a heavy sigh of relief.

"Wake me up when it's 1997," she mumbled almost unintelligibly in the middle of a good yawn, closing her eyes and stretching her limbs. Did she have to arch her back like that, though? Harry inconspicuously tried to loosen the collar of his shirt a bit and decided to stand up again to stoke the fire that was already crackling in the hearth. The fire was not nearly as much in need of him as he was in need of something to do that did not involve leering at his best friend.

"Ah, cozying up to the fireplace, you two?" a voice made Harry turn his head over his shoulder. It was Angus from seventh year, who had just come down the stairs and was presently being joined by his girlfriend Natalie, who smiled at him affectionately as she descended the other stairway to stand at his side.

"Just casually relaxing from a hard day's work of… making cookies and… eating some of them," Harry smoothly evaded any unwarranted entanglements.

Angus regarded him with an amicable if subtly amused smile. "Of course," he said, and with a quick glance at Natalie continued, "Well, we're going someplace else to casually relax as well. You two enjoy your night, eh?" And with that they both left the common room with their arms wrapped tightly around each other's waists.

"What's that even supposed to mean," Harry muttered into a beard he could only wish he had, and he slumped back down into the armchair with his arms firmly crossed in front of his chest.

"The two _lurve birds_ stayed here to _at least once_ experience Christmas and New Year's at Hogwarts _as a couple_ ," Hermione mockingly imparted to him, rolling her eyes to visually emphasize the unquestionably genuine derision in her voice.

Harry scoffed in an agreeing sort of way as he tossed his glasses onto the table. "What a corny thing to do."

"Utterly vulgar," Hermione further embellished with a genteel shake of the head.

Tiredly rubbing his eyes and the bridge of his nose, it took about two minutes for Harry's thoughts to fully shift to the realization that nobody besides the two of them was around anymore. Then he spent another three minutes stealing immensely clandestine glances at his companion… saw her gazing into the fire… saw her tucking away a stray strand of curly hair behind her ear… saw her absently running a fingertip up and down the side of her slender neck… saw her slowly licking her lips and leaving a faint wet shimmer on their silken surface… to come to the conclusion that by now surely the fire had to be sweating in the heat that he was giving off. If he hadn't known any better, which naturally he did, he would have observed that Hermione almost looked as if she were waiting for something. Like a cab, for instance.

He took a very deep and determined breath then as finally, after five and a half years at Hogwarts and then the last increasingly tense five minutes, he felt the time had come for him to prove himself worthy at last of that cliché bravery commonly associated with the house of Gryffindor.

"So, uh," he began in the unmistakable manner of a hero in the making, then cleared his throat a little to get rid of that pitiful croak of a voice. "Would you… would you like to come over here? Possibly?"

Her only reaction seemed at first to be no more than a smile that blossomed shyly in a corner of her lips to spread out over the rest of her warmly illuminated features. After a couple of seconds that to Harry felt like hours, she leisurely rose from the couch and walked over to the armchair, her soft steps making barely a sound at all on the rug below her feet. Only once she stood right in front of Harry did she look up at him.

"You aren't exactly leaving me a lot of space there," she noted coyly.

Harry, remaining firmly in the middle of the seat with only a little room left between him and the copious armrests on either of his sides, maintained an air of innocence and emboldened by her willing approach said to her, "Surely you can find space enough somewhere around here."

She arched an eyebrow, hesitated for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. And just like that she swiftly turned on the spot and let herself drop right into his lap, already leaning back and spreading her arms, doing her very best to bury Harry underneath her admittedly limited frame. Studiously ignoring him as already he huffed and puffed in exaggerated protest in between his laughter, she heaved an equally overstated sigh of perfect contentedness.

"Sooo comfortable," she assessed in mock relish, stretching a bit more just for good measure.

From somewhere deep within the mane of her long wild hair Harry's muffled voice made surrender known. "Okay, okay! Parley, truce, reparations! Let's—" He blew a bundle of hair from his mouth. "Let's try some minor rearrangements, maybe."

Giggling merrily Hermione obliged, made a 90-degree turn and with her legs dangling over the armrest on Harry's side let herself slip from his lap and into the spot that he now most obligingly left her. He straightened out his shirt a little while Hermione did effectively the same to her disheveled hair, and with the both of them exhaling a deep relaxing breath they finally looked at one another.

"So," Harry commenced. "Here we are."

"Indeed," Hermione agreed. "It's been quite a while, hasn't it?"

"Three weeks, to the day."

"Too long."

"Definitely."

A minor beat of silence passed. Then, coming from Hermione, "I really, _really_ missed my armchair."

Harry shook his head, chuckling. "Right, uh-huh."

"What, you don't believe me, mister?" she challenged him jocularly. "You dare question the sincerity of my affection?"

"Nah," he amended with an amused little smile. "Just its purported object."

A barely visible tinge of red on her cheeks was the only thing that undermined her otherwise perfect composure. "A rather bold assumption, I must say."

He looked straight at her then, even as she herself now kept her gaze firmly on her hands that she fiddled with perfunctorily in her lap. "I don't think it qualifies as bold at this point in time."

She was so close to him he could actually feel the hitch in her breath, and she seemed to carefully consider her response for a moment. "I suppose the possibility cannot be ruled out entirely that maybe – just maybe – the last couple of months were not exclusively about the armchair itself."

"Really?" Harry asked, feigning shock. "That's downright inconceivable!"

"A scandalous thought, I know."

"And what in the world gave you this unthinkable idea, my lady?"

"Well," his lady replied, "there is for one the small yet undeniable fact that that armchair over there," and twice Hermione nodded her head sideways, "basically is this one's identical twin."

Harry's eyes wandered over to said armchair at the opposite end of the table. Its color, size and shape, the material it was made of and every last aspect of its appearance, down to the very last detail, was indistinguishable from the one they were currently seated on. It was, truthfully, exactly the same.

"It's not the same, though," said Harry, eliciting a chuckle from Hermione. "It's not," he insisted adamantly and truly only half in jest. "Its—its position is all wrong. The way it's angled. It's objectively weird to look at the fireplace from that perspective, okay? It's just… just wrong. You could never relax over there. Not properly."

Hermione mulled over his words for a moment. "So for you it was indeed always all about this very armchair, then, and nothing else."

"I wouldn't say that," he forthwith answered, then hesitated for a moment as he tugged at a loose thread at a seam of Hermione's pants. "I don't deny that some teeny, tiny fraction of it may have been a little less about the chair and slightly more about the person that likes so much to sit in it for exactly ten minutes after the last class of every Tuesday."

Hermione secretly smiled to herself as she ran her fingers through her hair. "Sounds like quite the lunatic if you ask me," she opined. "Maybe you'd better stay away from that one."

"Could be kinda difficult," Harry skeptically rejoined. "What with her penchant for sitting on top of me and all that."

"So she's a clinger, too? Honestly, you should get rid of her while you still can."

"But I only just got her where I want her."

"And where's that?"

He regarded her with one of the more blatantly roguish smirks she'd so far seen on him as he said, "On top of me."

Hermione bashfully averted her eyes and shook her head at him even as the smiles refused to ever leave her face entirely for some inexplicable reason. "Cheeky boy," she sheepishly mumbled.

He watched her quietly for a little while. "You know," he then began in a less overtly suggestive manner, his voice quite thoughtful instead, "I trust you not to tell her, but truthfully… and despite her being both crazy and clingy… she happens to be one of my two favorite things in the world. Right alongside this armchair, I mean. Almost on par."

"Almost."

Harry nodded. "Very close," he said, by way of illustration holding thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. "Although…"

"Although?"

"Well, there's that thing the crazy girl said about the armchair once…"

"What thing?"

"Actually, she said a lot of things. She usually does." His shoulder was deservedly poked for that. "But what it all came down to was that this armchair basically is… this… divine… thingy."

"A divine thingy," Hermione tonelessly iterated.

"Yes, well, she was obviously a bit more eloquent than that," Harry admitted, "but really that's the gist of it. The essence, if you will." He paused momentarily. "Now, you see, the thing is… what I'm trying to say is… well, that I feel the same, frankly. Just, you know, not as much about the armchair as about… about her."

A contemplative sort of silence ensued, with Hermione looking to discern the most important information she could gather from his halting speech. "So you're saying she's a divine thingy, too."

He rapidly nodded his head in confirmation. "Pretty much, yeah. She doesn't know it, but… she's sublime."

"Well," said Hermione, by now fiddling not with her own hand but with his, "you'd better not let her hear that one, or she might never get off of you again."

He weakly shrugged his shoulder as he watched Hermione's graceful fingers gently explore all the lines and corners of his hand. "Could imagine worse," he muttered almost inaudibly, then shook himself when he realized he had gotten a bit woozy under her continuous touch. "What about you, though, while we're at it?"

"Me?"

"Your favorite things," he elucidated. "And not to pressure you or anything, but it would be kind of nice to be in there somewhere."

She giggled. "Hmmm… let… me… think," she teasingly took her time, then however grew genuinely and deeply ruminative for a couple of seconds, albeit not for the reason Harry couldn't help but fear for a moment. "Books in abundance and this armchair right here," she eventually began with a hint of melody in her voice, then continued increasingly musically, "Cups of hot chocolate and old Crookshanks my dear – To know in my heart what my best friend thinks – These are a few of my favorite things."

Harry laughed genially after having listened to her with rapt attention, and watching her intently he inadvertently remembered most vividly the way she had looked back in the kitchens earlier that day, her chestnut hair untamed and her radiant face sprinkled with spots of flour. Especially the tip of her nose. He had laughed then, too – warmly, happily – and she had stood on tiptoe to give his nose a nudge with her own and then had joined his laughter.

He presently found Hermione giving him a curious look. Perhaps his meandering thoughts were written a bit too plainly on his face. "So you're saying you can read minds now, is that it?" he asked her most fittingly.

She shook her head with an almost imperceptibly wicked little smile as she said, "Just yours."

"Oh?" His eyebrows spoke of intrigue. "Go on and tell me, then," he dared her, and by volition or by some other force compelled leaned just a bit closer into her. "What am I thinking right in this moment?"

She didn't miss the way his emerald eyes briefly flickered down to her lips with the miniature reflections of the fire glinting in their deep dark center, nor did she fail to recognize that this was not the first time they had done so. And so Hermione plucked up all the courage in her young, frantic heart and in an inner game of Truth or Dare went for both.

"You're thinking of kissing me," she told him bluntly, her every word a whisper loud and clear, "and wondering whether I want you to."

Again his face inched closer to hers, ever closer, his vagrant eyes drinking in every little detail of her countenance, one half fierily alit and the other dipped in dancing shadows. The timbre of his voice sent electrifying waves of shivers across her skin as he murmured in a cadence that rose from somewhere deeper in his throat, "Luckily your mind is an open book to me as well." She watched his nearing lips briefly twitch into an impossibly disarming, lopsided smile. "At least when you're not mulishly refusing to let me have a peek."

She exhaled a quavering whiff of a chuckle. In her lap the fingers of her right hand were loosely laced through the fingers of his left, and her other venturesome hand somehow found its way to the front of his shirt seemingly of its own accord. A single finger slipped underneath the smooth fabric and around a button, pulling him ever so slightly, ever so urgently towards her. She looked up at him through her eyelashes and mustered whatever remnants of coherence she could find.

"Tell me then what I am thinking."

With their noses a mere finger's breadth away from touching and her shimmering eyes a willing captive of his gaze, she felt all her being converge into a single pure sensation when his right hand came to lightly rest at the side of her face, his thumb a gentle stroke along her cheekbone, and her eyes fluttered shut with the faintest sigh unsteadily escaping her mouth as two trembling pairs of lips parted in nervous longing for the yet unknown.

"Kiss me," he breathed, and the susurration of his words lightly caressed her eager lips just as the gap was closed at last and finally they received the tender touch of his.

And somehow – inexplicably – it all just _fit_ in manifold simplicity, fell right into place with everything suddenly making sense in some unfathomable way; their lips, as it now revealed itself to them, were unequivocally made to meet, to merge, to melt together and by their own wish never part again, for in this deeply stirring encounter, this heartfelt fusion of separate entities, they both with equal certainty found what likely would forever remain their favorite thing of all: to be one instead of two.

 **~ The End ~**

* * *

 **Footstool note**

 _Hermione's spontaneous song thingy:_ While neither the story nor its title were directly inspired by it, at some point right in the middle of it I suddenly found myself thinking of the song _My Favorite Things_ from the 1965 movie _The Sound of Music_ (based on the 1959 Broadway musical of the same name… which was based on the 1949 memoirs of Maria Augusta von Trapp… of which there was also a 1956 German movie adaptation… this is more complicated than I thought). So purely on a whim I wrote up those four rephrased lines with Hermione and a suitable scene in mind. Maybe someone will make a musical based on them. And then a movie. Based on my memoirs. That I have yet to write. Or sing.


End file.
